Piping plover chick ecology following landscape‐level disturbance

Abstract

Population declines of disturbance‐dependent species due to suppression of natural disturbances are realized across ecosystems. The piping plover (Charadrius melodus; plover), a disturbance‐dependent and conservation‐reliant shorebird that nests on sandy beaches and barrier islands on the Atlantic Coast, was listed under the United States Endangered Species Act in 1986. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy landed on Fire and Westhampton islands, barrier island nesting sites for plovers in New York, USA. Hurricane Sandy was a natural disturbance in this system, creating abundant nesting habitat. The number of chicks produced by a pair, or a population, is a direct measure of reproductive output, and gaining a better understanding of productivity and chick behavior following large‐scale habitat creation may improve plover habitat management and potentially species persistence. We evaluated the effects of landscape features on habitat selection, behavior, and survival of plover broods using logistic regression, generalized linear mixed effects models, and survival models. Plover broods selected flatter sites with less dense vegetation than available at random. Chick foraging rates were highest in moist substrates and were lower in areas of higher nesting plover density. Chick survival was greater for broods that hatched earlier in the breeding season and increased as chicks aged. Generally, providing access to sites with flatter, moist substrates will likely result in higher quality brood rearing habitat on the landscape. Ultimately, vegetation removal and habitat management may be needed to reduce plover nesting density and ensure sufficient habitat, which may in turn improve plover chick survival. Moreover, sustaining natural landscape disturbances such as those resulting from storms, and not taking actions to prevent hurricane‐created overwash, will allow these landscape features to persist.

Red fox trap success is correlated with piping plover chick survival

“…We used the autumn and winter data following the plover breeding season because it better represented fox abundance with respect to winter die-offs, kit production, and territory changes that may happen between plover breeding seasons (Black 2021). We also included plover nesting density (pairs/ha of nesting habitat, summarized for the 4 sites in the study area; Walker et al 2019) and days since hatch as additional variables to control for known variation (Robinson et al 2023). We standardized all variables prior to their inclusion in the model.…”

“…We used a modified Dail‐Madsen model (Dail and Madsen 2011) described by Robinson et al (2023) to estimate pre‐fledging (0–25 days after hatch) chick survival ($$\varphi $$) each year from 2015–2018. This model approximates a young survival model (Lukacs et al 2004) and uses counts of chicks in known broods at regular intervals to estimate individual chick survival.…”

The Influence of Tide, Wind, and Habitat on the Abundance and Foraging Rate of Three Species of Imperiled Plovers in Southwest Florida, USA

“…Focal surveys were conducted by randomly selecting individuals to record foraging behaviors and the number of pecks. Previous research has indicated that the peck rate can be representative of the intake or foraging rate of a plover when the prey of the plover is too small to identify during the survey [30,31]. Focal surveys were three minutes per individual, based on a prior study of foraging behavior, which included a two-minute survey per foraging individual [32].…”